


The Other Ghosts

by hourtohourtohour



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21954940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hourtohourtohour/pseuds/hourtohourtohour
Summary: my digital secret santa for the lovely poom!Julian has just died and to combat his boredom, he decides he has to befriend the other ghosts.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	The Other Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poompoom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poompoom/gifts).



> this is for poom! i'm so lucky to know you through the ghiscord and your instagram account is truly a blessing to this word. i hope you enjoy it!

Julian is bored. He reckons this is the most bored he’s been in his whole life, well… existence. He’s been dead for 48 hours and he’s almost beginning to miss those discussion things they did in parliament, what do you call them? Debates! That’s the baby! Well, he fell asleep several times during those and he must have counted the beams on the ceiling at least 20 times, and yet that seems scintillating in comparison to sitting in this old house with only the other ghosts for company. By now, his body has been taken away, the reporters have come and gone and the only living person in the house is Lady Button who, at 82, spends most of her time reading in her bed. It is as he watches the business card dropped by one of the reporters, the last sign that any human had been here in the last 100 years, is picked up by a goose who promptly waddles away with it, that Julian realises that he’s going to have to make the best of his situation: he’s going to have to befriend the ghosts. 

Now Julian knows that won’t be easy; at the moment, whenever he greets one of the ghosts, they tend to awkwardly greet him back, blush, then look away. Which, in Julian’s opinion is a bit ridiculous. He knows he didn’t have the most conventional of deaths but that reaction seems a bit excessive. I mean, don’t they know what a bit of fun looks like? Maybe they need to loosen up. Trust his luck to be stuck with a bunch of prudes for eternity. Coming to think of it, the only one who doesn’t do that os Robin, who seems to grin wildly whenever he sees Julian, so maybe that is the place to start?

“Hey! Robin! Wait up!”  
The caveman turns to look at him with a grunt, before breaking into a grin. Julian wonders how much the other ghosts had seen of his last hour on earth. He shakes off the thought and tries to remember where he was going with the conversation. Ah yes!  
“Robin, you seem like, ah, a friendly guy. Do you fancy a chat?” Robin tilts his head in thought, before giving a noncommittal shrug and sitting down a little table nearby. Julian takes the other seat.

“So, Robin, how do you pass the time here? I mean, you’ve been here for what, thousands of years?” Robin scrunches his nose in thought before shrugging again.  
“I go BOO!” Robin suddenly shouts, and Julian jumps. Yes, he has been the victim of many of these pranks and he must say, while he found watching the others being shocked hilarious, it was a less pleasant experience when it happened to him.  
“But do you not have any, erm, hobbies? Games you play…” Julians eyes catch on the chess set in front of them, a heavy layer of dust settled on the board and pieces.  
“Robin, do you know how to play chess?”

It takes Julian a surprisingly short amount of time to teach Robin the rules of chess; he picks it up very quickly. Now comes the real difficulty - moving the pieces. Pat had explained how being a ghost works to Julian: that living people can’t see or hear them, that they can’t leave Button house or grounds, and that they can’t make objects move- they only pass through them. Now Julian had understood this, but who’s to say they had got it wrong? Pat had a bright blue arrow through his neck- he wasn’t to be trusted! After all, Julian was stuck here for eternity- it couldn’t hurt to test the boundaries a little? 

So he tries to push the chess pieces. Robin laughs at him and the Captain tuts at him as he strides past, informing Julian that it is hopeless, and hadn’t he been listening to Pat when he explained the limitations of being a ghost? But there’s nothing like someone doubting him to make Julian want to do something. After all, he had got a first from Cambridge only to be able to smirk smugly at his tutor, who, though once claiming that Julian was about as thick as a brick wall, had to begrudgingly admire his achievements. So Julian pushes and pushes the chess pieces. Nothing happens and he keeps pushing, straining himself, his finger shaking. By now all the ghosts have come past at least once to see what he’s up to, though Robin has been cheering him on for the last forty-five minutes. 

It’s when the Captain is giving him his third lecture on why it won’t work, and Julian is starting to get really pissed off at him, that he feels the chess piece. He feels the chess piece; his hand doesn’t pass through it. For the first time since his death he starts to feel hopeful and he strains himself even harder. He thinks of the Captain and the other ghosts who don’t think he can do it. He thinks of his tutor who thought he’d never achieve anything and he pushes harder. The chess piece begins to shift. It moves a couple millimetres, half a centimetre, a centimetre, into the next square on the chess board. The Captain stops mid-sentence and stares, mouth open in disbelief. Robin starts cheering and Julian starts grinning. He stops pushing and stands up, bowing to a celebrating Robin and a begrudgingly admiring Captain. Maybe this whole ghost thing isn’t so bad after all?

Julian is wrong. This whole ghost thing is so bad after all. He has managed to befriend Robin, and plays chess with him for hours on end every day. Though he tries to hide it, the Captain is in awe of his ability to move objects and they have become… acquaintances. They are not friends, in life Julian would never have associated himself with someone as uptight and grumpy as the Captain, but in death he has much less choice. He bonded with Pat, likewise someone he would never have talked to in life, about pop culture, Pat being the closest in era of death to Julian. Three down, four to go (not including Humphrey - no one knows where his head has been left). Julian had decided that Lady Button would be next, and oh boy was that as bad decision. She has been screaming at him for the last fifteen minutes. At first, he tried to reason with her, using his best politician charm, trying to explain his actions, though he couldn’t get out much more than ‘Well, um, you see, you have to understand the context of the situation, ma’am, would you listen to me? Excuse me? I was trying to say-” but there’s only so much you can say to an old dead lady who is screaming at you about dishonour and bringing shame to name of Button, and Julian is not willing to yell at an old lady, dead or not. It is after his head starts to throb and his ears ring a little that he decides to give up on trying to befriend Lady Button.

Now, Julian is not friends with Thomas Thorne. He doesn’t see how anyone could be friends with that whiny little toe rag, never mind the way his brown eyes shine deep and gold in the sunlight- No! Julian can’t stand the man. Always moping, and writing poetry and lounging dejectedly on all the furniture. Bah, Julian hates artists, he says as he tries to ignore the way Thomas’ curls fall perfectly onto his forehead. Nope. Absolutely not. Although, some part of Julian can’t help but enjoy the poet’s company. He enjoys their arguments and watching Thomas storm off and threaten to drown himself in the lake or throw himself out of the window. It’s amusing, and amusement is hard to find is his present company. 

Julian didn’t think he’d get along with Kitty. She was shallow and innocent and silly. Julian hadn’t been around people like her for a while, and he isn’t used to censoring what he says and it had been difficult to adjust to the Captain shooting him disapproving looks every time he said something unsavoury in front of Kitty. In fact, all of the ghosts seemed quite protective of her; she was the youngest of them and they tried their hardest to keep her away from Julian. However, Kitty has a mind of her own and was determined to befriend the latest arrival at Button House. 

He’s walking in the grounds when he hears a giggle from behind one of the bushes. He starts to walk towards the source of the noise when Kitty suddenly jumps out at him. Do these ghosts really have nothing better to do than scare the living daylights out of him? 

“Hello Kitty,” he says, “How are you today?”

Kitty giggles again. “How did you die?”

“Ah, um, well,” Julian stutters, unsure of what to say. He can’t tell her, can he? The other ghosts haven’t told her, although they all clearly know. Julian wonders again how many of them saw it, and shudders at the thought. Is there a way he can tell her without making it, um, as graphic as it was? He could tell her the name of what they were doing- a ‘ Backwards Brazilian Barbeque’, but that would just lead to more questions. Or he could just make something up. He was a politician: he was good at making things up.

“Well, I, um, died of natural causes. Y’know, had a heart attack.”

Kitty frowns, slightly suspicious. “Well then why do you have no trousers on?”

“Ah, well that was rather unfortunate. You see, I was actually getting dressed when I had the heart attack.” Julian shifts from foot to foot, unsure of whether this is plausible enough for her to believe.

“Well then why wouldn’t the others tell me?”

“Um… it was a prank?” Now Julian is sure she won’t believe this, this is a poor lie, even for him. He’s about to turn on his heel and escape before she can ask any more questions, but her face breaks into a wide smile.

“Do you want to know how I died? Ooh I can show you my collection of ribbons. Do you like ribbons? What’s your favourite colour? Oh, it is so nice to have someone new to talk to!”

She links her arm with Julian’s and pulls him back towards the house, talking at a million miles a minute, and Julian has no choice but to go with her, wondering if she’s always this energetic. (He finds out rather quickly that she is).

Julian did try to talk to Mary, but every time he opens his mouth, she mutters something about witchcraft and blasphemy, before walking through the closest wall into another room. Julian, out of habit, tends to still use doors and doesn’t know the layout of the house all that well, so is often left wondering which room she has fled to and too slow to follow her. Julian is beginning to give Mary up as a lost cause, like Lady Button, when Robin happened. (Of course, Robin is always ‘happening’, and if you don’t see or hear him for a couple of hours, you know he’s up to no good). 

Lady Button has been particularly grumpy this week, complaining or shrieking at everyone unfortunate enough to cross her path. Julian is starting to become a bit fed up with her, to be completely honest. And, when he tries to run away from her, she follows him through the walls, shouting at him about shame and whatnot. Which is why, when Robin decides to prank her, nobody really objects. Lady Button is just in the middle of chastising Kitty about skipping through the corridors, when Robin jumps through the wall and yells “BOO!”. In shock, Lady Button starts backwards, trips, and falls down the stairs. Mary and Julian, the only ghosts nearby other than Kitty, are shocked into silence for a moment, before bursting into uproarious laughter. 

“Did yous see thats-”  
“Her face-”  
“Her scream-”  
“That was hilarious!”  
“Methinks she deserved that!”

And so Julian and Mary wander off, ignoring Lady Button’s angry shouts, laughing about what they had just witnessed. It’s only when he’s re-enacting it for the third time that he realises that this is the first time Mary’s actually talked to him. The thought makes him smile, before he imitates the shocked and affronted face Lady Button made when she fell. Again.

Maybe he could get used to this whole ghost thing?


End file.
